In communication systems that allow a user (caller) to engage in a communication session with one or more other users (callers), a user at an endpoint connects into a call control unit that switches media streams sent from each endpoint to the other endpoint(s) participating in a communication session.
The call control unit may have an autoattendant/interactive voice response function that presents multimedia prompts to a caller/participant at an endpoint to enter the appropriate information so that the call control unit initiates a communication session or joins an endpoint in a communication session. The autoattendant function is provided by a plurality of encoder resources that can accommodate a finite number of endpoints at any given time. However, there are times when there are more communication session requests from endpoints than there are available encoder resources.